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Due to exhaustion brought on by spending the last several days at work packing up to move to new offices next week, I wasn’t able to write a new post for Writing the Romance Novel. But just in case you’re jonesing to read something about the craft of writing, check out these past posts on Characters and Point of View:

Creating Credible Characters (June 2007). See also Be Your Own Casting Director, Point of View
Creating Credible Characters—Introduction
Creating Credible Characters—Where Do Characters Come From?
Creating Credible Characters–Who Are You?
Creating Credible Characters–Culture Clash
Creating Credible Characters–Let’s Get Personal
Creating Credible Characters–Mannerisms and Quirks
Creating Credible Characters–What Do You Want?
Creating Credible Characters–What’s in a Name?

Point of View (June 2007). See also Creating Credible Characters, Showing vs. Telling
Point of View–Whose Story Is This? 
Point of View–How Important Is It?
Point of View–Semantics & Book List
Point of View–Giving POV the Third Degree
Guest Blogger Erica Vetsch–Making your Point (of View)
Guest Blogger Georgiana Daniels–Getting POV Right
Point of View–Showing vs. Telling

Though this is coming under much more debate these days, with all of the editors and agents saying chick lit is dead, dead, dead (which they said about historicals several years ago, but I digress), the standard POV for romance is third-person limited, past-tense, featuring the viewpoints of the heroine and the hero. That is what the romance reader is looking for.

I have heard from several authors recently that their first-person/present-tense “romance” novels were rejected, because the editor felt they were too chick-litty; or the author was asked to rewrite the story in third-person/past-tense and include the hero’s POV. And, by way of full disclosure, I am extremely prejudiced against the first/present POV and have only read two authors whose first/present chick lit novels I’ve enjoyed: Georgiana Daniels and Laura Jensen Walker.

Yes, single viewpoint romances have been written, and yes, they can be done well. In fact, we could say that there is almost a subgenre of romance which is the “girl must choose between two boys” romance. Young adult romances use this setup a lot (such as the Sunfire romances I read as a teen), as does chick lit.

I just want you to be forewarned that selling a romance novel that isn’t third/past/dual POV might be a struggle. Not impossible. But a struggle. But, don’t just take my prejudiced word for it.

A writer should stick to one POV per scene. “Headhopping” is a definite no-no.

For category romance, a book should either contain just the heroine’s POV, or, optimally, the heroine’s and hero’s POV.

Multiple POVs [more than hero/heroine] should be reserved for single-title works only.

In general, third-person POV is the preferred viewpoint.

(Rebecca Vinyard, The Romance Writer’s Handbook)

What does she mean, no headhopping? What about Nora Roberts and Jude Deveraux and Julie Garwood and Lori Wick? They headhop all over the place! Yes, and they’re all multi-published authors whose books sell on the strength of their brand-name, not the strength of their craft. Honing the skill of writing in deep, third-limited POV will strengthen your writing like nothing else.

The most common point of view in Christian romance is third person limited, alternating the hero’s or heroine’s POV by scene or chapters. . . . This method allows readers to enjoy getting to know both the hero and heroine intimately by seeing their relationship through both characters’ thoughts.
(Gail Gaymer Martin, Writing the Christian Romance)

Let’s take, for example, the movie You’ve Got Mail. What if it only had Meg Ryan’s scenes and the scenes in which she and Tom Hanks are together? Take out all of the scenes of him apart from her. You’d lose a big chunk of what’s important to the development of Kathleen and Joe’s relationship: the conflicts he brings to the table because of his family. If the story were told only from Kathleen’s POV, we would probably never understand why she ends up falling in love with him—nor would we get the chance to see the change and growth in him. Without getting inside the hero’s head, it’s a lot harder to convince the reader that the hero is worthy of our heroine’s love.

By using POV to allow the reader an intimate glimpse inside the character’s perspectives, the writer allows the reader to understand why the character is threatened by the conflict and why she [or he] feels so strongly about the subject.
(Gallagher/Estrada, eds., Writing Romances)

Including both the hero’s and heroine’s viewpoints not only gives us insight into both sides of the developing relationship, it’s also a way to create and maintain suspense and conflict. As we talked about in the Hooking the Reader series, being able to cut away from a character’s POV at a pivotal moment—a moment of decision or the cusp of taking a new action—hooks the reader and keeps them reading to find out what happens next.

In romance, it is the hero who carries the book. Within the dynamics of reading a romance, the female reader is the hero, and also is the heroine-as-object-of-the-hero’s-interest. . . . Through her own and the hero’s eyes, the reader watches and judges the heroine . . . the closer she moves toward spontaneously identifying with both hero and heroine, the more rich and rewarding the romance is likely to be for her.
(Laura Kinsale, “The Androgynous Reader,” Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women)

For Discussion:
What POV do you prefer to read romances in? Do you always want the hero’s POV? Would you ever consider writing a single POV romance from the hero’s viewpoint? Do you find yourself identifying more with the heroine when you see her through the hero’s eyes—wanting to be in her place as the object of his admiration? What POV have you chosen to use? Any other thoughts on POV in romance?

For those of you who’ve been with me a while, much of this post may seem familiar . . . because I’ve lifted most of it from the Showing vs. Telling series I did several months back.

Creating a deep, intimate point of view—getting the readers entrenched in each viewpoint character’s head—is inseparable from using a style of writing that shows rather than tells, in both limited and omniscient POV.

In omniscient POV, your readers are always going to feel a little more at-arms’-length from your characters, simply because of the fact that they’re never in one character’s head long enough to really feel comfortable becoming intimate with the characters. In limited POV, however, because the story is being told from only one viewpoint character’s POV at a time, the reader will settle in, will let their mental defenses drop, will become comfortable being intimate with the characters—but only if you use a showing, active style that allows them to be so.

Character Descriptions
See also Showing vs. Telling—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, and Showing vs. Telling—In the Eye of the Beholder

Describing what a character looks like from his or her own viewpoint in a limited POV story can be difficult. Gone are the days when we could have our heroine stand in front of a mirror and think about her own appearance. We don’t want our characters to come off as egotistical or shallow because they’re thinking about what they look like (unless that is part of their characterization). Therefore, we must find a way somehow to show what they look like without telling—but in a way that feels natural.

It’s okay to have your character sweep her dark hair over her shoulder. It’s not perfect, but readers accept it. The easiest way to do it in 3rd Person/Limited is to describe each character in the other characters’ viewpoints. But most readers, especially romance readers, are going to want some kind of clues to begin building a mental picture of the character from the beginning. For examples from Susan May Warren’s and Linda Windsor’s novels, see Showing vs. Telling—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall and Showing vs. Telling—In the Eye of the Beholder.

Character Emotions
See also Showing vs. Telling—Feeeeeeeeeelings . . .
One of the points I hit repeatedly through the Showing vs. Telling series is the signpost words of telling: was (Character was adjective) and felt (Character felt emotion). Remember what I said about using felt to describe your characters’ emotions?

Starting today, however, train your brain to associate the word FELT with that heavy, scratchy, stiff fabric used for arts and crafts and not character emotions. Felt does not make comfortable clothing, so why “dress” your characters with it?

Make the emotions do something to the character (Fear ran down Molly’s spine like a hundred tiny mice with cold feet.)

What is your character’s internal vocabulary? If Molly isn’t afraid of mice, the above example wouldn’t be a good way to describe her fear. Your character’s age, cultural background, ethnicity, historical era, education, spirituality, etc., will all make a difference in the words you choose to use for the character’s internal emotional conflict. And each character’s should be different. This is one of the ways in which you give each character a unique voice in his or her viewpoint scenes.

For example, in Ransome’s Honor, my hero William is a sea captain—has been at sea since he was twelve years old:

William waited behind a middle-aged couple, careful to stay far enough behind to avoid the plumage swaying wildly from the back of the woman’s head.

Beyond the enormous white feathers, the crowd of well-dressed guests surged and ebbed like the tide rolling into Spithead harbor during a summer thunderstorm. His nerves tensed just as they did every time one of the lookouts cried, “Sail, oh!” But this wasn’t the sea, and these weren’t French and Spanish ships lying in wait to blow him out of the water. He must secure the guns, loose the headsail, and make forward progress into these unknown social waters.

This is his internal vocabulary; it’s how his experiences, his life impacts his thought processes.

The Five Senses
See also Showing vs. Telling—Do You See What I See? and Showing vs. Telling—Do You Smell What I Taste?
For the use of the five senses, I’m not going to try to summarize here what I wrote in the Showing vs. Telling posts. The most important reminder I can give here is that in limited point of view, you can only show what the viewpoint character experiences or knows for him- or herself. If the character doesn’t see it, you can’t show it (no statements like: Unbeknownst to Callie, John slipped out the front door while she set the dessert aflame).

The Sixth Sense
See also Showing vs. Telling—The Sixth Sense
Try to eliminate words such as knew, thought, and wondered from your writing. If you are deep into limited POV, you do not need to call attention to the fact that it is the viewpoint character who is knowing, thinking, or wondering. It’s just stream of consciousness—let it flow without the puppeteer’s hand showing through these telling signpost words. If you use italicized direct internal thoughts (which in limited POV should be used sparingly, if at all—click here for another discussion of that), you do not need to include the tag, “she thought.” The act of putting the thoughts in italics shows the reader that it is direct internal thought.

I’ll be at the ICRS tradeshow in Atlanta on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll be able to at least get a few “encore” posts up, but if not, I’ll be back Thursday! If you have ideas for other writing-related topics you’d like to see discussed here, please post a comment.

Today, I’m pleased to have my other critique partner Georgiana Daniels as a guest columnist . . .

Kaye has done an excellent job in giving us the information we need to maintain a consistent POV. Believe me, had I read up on POV prior to venturing out, I could have avoided many a train wreck. Early on, I had a tendency to drag my readers through multiple heads in one scene, and even when I switched scenes, all my viewpoint characters sounded the same. One time I tried writing from a male POV, but used my own natural voice. The result? He was so effeminate it was no wonder his wife left him. But my unsuccessful attempts were good practice.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned—the hard way, I might add—is that I have to know my characters deeply in order to avoid the pitfalls associated with whichever POV I choose. The easiest trap to fall into is making the character sound just like me, the author, instead of sounding like Lucy or Molly or Bella or the killer.

The first two full-length novels I wrote were chick lit. I wanted intimate, conversational stories where the reader could feel like a part of my heroines’ lives. With each story, I wanted to be privy to my heroine’s thoughts as they happened, and to interpret the world through her eyes alone. It seemed natural to choose first person, present tense.

So how could I keep the main characters from sounding just like me, or like each other? I had to know them inside and out, and believe me, that didn’t always come with the first draft. By knowing the characters’ backgrounds, interests, immediate and long-term goals, I was able to make each one have a distinctive voice, even though both books were written in first person, present tense.

But first person has its pitfalls too, like creating a character the reader likes well enough to stick with through an entire novel. If the reader doesn’t like the main character, they’re either stuck for the duration, or they’re going to chuck the book—both options are bad for the writer! The other big challenge for me is to weave a well-rounded story based solely on one person’s immediate observations. It takes a lot of practice.

Now I’m working on a suspense, and in order to up the tension I’ve found it necessary to show not only the heroine’s point of view, but also the villain’s. So this time I’m using limited third. It gives me a bit more freedom to explore the story from different angles. Look at the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each wrote about the life of Jesus, but from their own unique point of view. Each writer brought something different to the table, and added his own flavor to the story. That’s what I’m trying to do, but on a much smaller scale, of course.

Switching back into third person after writing my last two novels in first has been a bumpy ride. But I love the new challenge! To avoid the problem I had in my previous attempt to write a male POV, I’ve started taking a few minutes to crawl into his skin, lest I sissify my bad guy. How does he view what’s happening in the story? How does a hired gun talk? What kinds of things does he see that others might not? His scenes tend to have more fragmented sentences, snippy comments, and edge toward sarcasm. And they are my favorite to write!

When I switch back to my heroine’s POV, I do the same thing. She’s a reclusive artist in the Alaskan wilderness. What is she going to notice? What kinds of words does she use? How is the world filtered through her eyes? Her scenes tend to have more flowery language, utilizing a larger vocabulary, and more detail—at least until she finds out she’s being hunted.

Needless to say, I’m still learning, and hopefully making progress. And from my POV, every day spent at the keyboard is another chance to get it right.

Today’s post is by a very special guest, my critique partner Erica Vetsch.

Thank you to Kaye for inviting me as a guest blogger to share my experience with learning the ins and outs of Point of View.   

BEFORE I KNEW: 
When I joined the ACFW 1 January, 2004, I was completely clueless as to what all this POV talk was about.  My ignorance was made abundantly clear when I received my first ever contest judged entry back from the Noble Theme (now Genesis) Contest. 

My judges—may blessings rain down up on their heads—gently, but firmly, guided my first tottering steps in understanding POV.  Their comments included: “Whose head are we in here?” and “You’ve jumped about with your point of view quite a bit.  Most editors want to see a single point of view per scene.” Those poor judges.  In one scene in that—my first novel—I had no less than six POV characters. 

I was writing as if I was watching the story unfold on a TV screen.  First, I was looking over the hero’s shoulder at the heroine…quickly describe heroine as seen through hero’s eyes…then the camera shot changed to look over the heroine’s shoulder…quickly describe hero as seen through heroine’s eyes.  Every character in the scene got to have a say, got internal monologue, got their thoughts on the page. No secrets anywhere…that is, until I went all omniscient and dropped in a ‘Little did they know.’ 

Chaos reigned. 

HOW I LEARNED: 
At the advice of those contest judges, I began reading books on craft, focusing on the chapters about Point of View.  I’m going to recommend a few here. I know Kaye’s mentioned them, but another endorsement won’t hurt. J  

Character, Emotion & Viewpoint, by Nancy Kress (in fact, if you can, try to get your hands on the entire Write Great Fiction Series from Writer’s Digest.  It will be money well spent.)
Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein (It’s true, it really is a terrific book that will help ANY novelist become better.)
Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer, by Browne and King (Some parts are nappers, and some I didn’t totally get, but they’re instructive on POV issues.)

Worlds of understanding opened before me as I studied.  Then I sat down to do the hard work.  I wrote.  I experimented. I edited. Theory is one thing.  Practice is another. There is no substitute, no class, no instruction book that will teach you as much as sitting your tookis down and writing. 

WHAT I’VE DISCOVERED: 
Regardless of the number of POVs you choose to use, the one hard and fast rule is (say it with me now) ONE POV PER SCENE. 

“But why?” you may ask. 

When I first became aware of ‘head-hopping,’ as shifting mid-scene (or mid-paragraph…or as I found in some places in my first novel, mid-sentence! Ouch!) is called, I was frustrated.  I had read books by best-selling authors, both CBA and ABA, who head-hopped more than a flea at a dog show. If it was good enough for them, well, it was good enough for me. And besides, I felt my story needed all those POV shifts for my readers to ‘get’ what was happening and to feel all the Emotion (with a capital E!) I was pouring into this work.

Boy howdy, was I wrong. It had the opposite effect. In replying to Kaye’s post of Thursday last, I mentioned a poem by John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) based upon a Hindu fable. I feel it illustrates the use of POV in creating emotion and tension. You can find the poem by clicking here.

Limited POV leads to conflict! Without conflict, you have no story! Each blind man in the poem knew only part of the whole, and each man was passionate about voicing his unique perspective. Your own characters have a unique perspective on the world you’ve created. When you limit the POV in a scene to one, it feels more like real life.  The same way you only know life as you perceive it, not the thoughts and perceptions of others around you, so too the reader will be drawn in, and in a sense, become the POV character as you limit the scene to that one character’s thoughts and perceptions.

So, how do you choose whose POV to write the scene in? I try to choose either the one who has the most at stake in the scene, or the one who has the most to learn. Who can succeed brilliantly in this scene, or who can fail spectacularly?  Who is the most frustrated, the most scared, the most angry, the most victimized? It ratchets up the tension in a hurry.

My last novel, Drums of the North Star, is historical fiction based upon the Minnesota/Dakota War of 1862. I used four POV characters, two men, two women. Each POV was necessary if I was going to cover all the events I wanted to over the six week period of the conflict. It was the number of POV’s that helped categorize the novel. While there is romance in it, the romance is not the crux of the story. Each POV carries its own weight and is needful for the unfolding of the plot. 

But in the romance I’m working on now, the only two POV’s that matter are the hero’s and the heroine’s. This is a short, category romance aimed at the Heartsong line. Adding other POV’s would dilute the drama between the H/H and add too much to the word count. 

My advice is: Don’t kick against this ‘rule’ regarding limiting your POV.  Embrace it. Don’t dilute the emotion and conflict of the story by hopping into everyone’s heads in each scene. If everything is known by the reader, why would they keep on reading? Instead, use the powerful POV tool to stir up conflict, to focus attention and emotion on the people who matter most in each scene, and to allow your reader a deeper look into the motivations, the frustrations, the needs and wants of the characters you love.  And the fact that it goes over well with editors is a nice bonus too. 

Thanks again to Kaye for inviting me to guest blog on this topic. Be sure to check the archives of this blog for a wealth of information and instruction on fiction writing. I daresay you won’t find better anywhere in cyberspace.

As hinted at and promised, here is the “nuts and bolts” explanation of what “Point of View” means. (Remember, for the purposes of the discussion here, POV is the narrative style for the story, while Viewpoint refers to which character’s head we’re inside of.)

There are three main aspects to consider when choosing a Point of View narrative style: Person, Omniscience, and Tense.

Person
Good things come in threes. There are three “Persons” (did “Holy, Holy, Holy” just start running through your head?):

FIRST: I went to the store. We had a conversation. (Viewpoint pronouns are I, me, mine, we, our, ours.)

SECOND: You went to the store, and you had a conversation with the butcher. (Viewpoint pronouns are you, your, yours.) Run, do not walk, away from this Person. Several authors have experimented with this in the past, and it hasn’t done well.

THIRD: Connie went to the store. She picked up bread and milk, then stopped in the meat department and had a conversation with the butcher. (Viewpoint pronouns are he, she, him, her, his, hers, they, their, theirs.)

Omniscience
Here, we have three choices, as well.

OMNISCIENT: Also known as “head-hopping.” The narrator is all-knowing and exists outside of the characters’ heads, dipping into any character’s thoughts at any given time throughout the story. This is the style of POV where the narrator is truly a narrator—almost an additional character who is telling this story. The voice/tone of the story is that of the narrator’s, not of the individual characters. Key signpost phrases are along the lines of: “little did he know . . .” or “he didn’t see the maniacal smile that overtook Gordon’s face at his words.” The narrator is allowed to tell the reader things that the characters might not know or haven’t experienced for themselves.

LIMITED: Camping out in only one character’s viewpoint per scene. There is no obvious narrator. The story is told completely from the characters’ own thoughts and experiences. The author cannot include anything in the narrative that the viewpoint character does not experience/know for him- or herself. When in one characters’ viewpoint, another character’s thoughts can be surmised from her body language, tone of voice, or facial expression, but it cannot be known.

OBJECTIVE: This really is not used in fiction as much, but more so in Journalism. This is the “just the facts, ma’am” narrative style.

Tense
Ready for another set of three? This is the tense of verbs you choose to use in your narrative style. (And this is by no means exhaustive, just the three that usually show up in prose.)

PRESENT: I go to the window and open it. Outside, birds sing, and the wind blows gently. (Action is happening in the here-and-now.)

PAST/ACTIVE: I went to the window and opened it. Outside, birds sang, and the wind blew gently. (Verbs are past tense, but because this is the most common form of storytelling, it still seems to be immediate action.)

PAST/PASSIVE: I had gone to the window and had opened it. Outside, birds were singing, and the wind was blowing gently. (Usually a form of the “be” verb plus a gerund—word ending in -ing—or a form of the “have” verb + past-tense verb.)

Maybe it’s a stretch to separate the two Past Tenses (I did need three, after all), however, some authors choose to use one or the other. Passive past tense is usually much weaker and slower than Past/Active. One thing that most critiquers, contest judges, and editors will tell you is to choose a strong active verb instead of a was + -ing combo. Sometimes, though, a was + -ing is okay, maybe even necessary in a Past/Active story. The “have” + past-tense verb, when used in a Past/Active story can indicate that something happened before the immediate action: Rory slipped into the back row of the lecture hall. Last time she’d done this, the professor had called her out and made a spectacle of her for being late.

So what are the combinations?
FIRST PERSON/OMNISCIENT: Yes, you can have an omniscient first person narrator. This is a narrator who does know what’s going on in other people’s heads because he or she is telling this story not as it’s happening, but after the fact. (”Little did I know, at the same time, Julianne was stealing my boyfriend from me.”) This is, for obvious reasons, going to be best told in past tense.

FIRST PERSON/LIMITED: This is the most familiar form of first person and can be told in present or past tense. It is told from the “I” viewpoint, the story unfolding as events unfold. The “I” character is experiencing everything as it happens. The limitations of this is that the “I” character is the only one whose thoughts/experiences you can reveal to the reader. You can never get into someone else’s head. The other liability of this POV is the issue of mortal danger. If the character is telling the story from an “I” viewpoint, the reader is going to know that the character will most likely survive whatever happens.

SECOND PERSON/ANYTHING: Run, do not walk, away from this POV.

THIRD PERSON/OMNISCIENT: In third person, again, this is “head hopping.” It can be told in past or present tense, but past tense tends to work better. Some readers/writers prefer the “god-like” feel of this POV, the ability to know what any and every character (even sometimes nearby animals) think about what’s going on in the scene. The difficulty with it is that it has a tendency to keep the reader at arms’ length from the characters, because there is no true intimacy built by staying inside a single character’s thoughts for any length of time.

THIRD PERSON/LIMITED: This is the industry standard for third-person narrative. To reiterate what I wrote in a previous post: this means seeing/experiencing the action through only one character’s eyes/thoughts. It’s camping out for a full scene in the head of just one character. This POV gives your reader the opportunity to get to know your characters MUCH better than you may with omniscient/head-hopping POV. This POV is very similar to the first person/limited POV in that it’s taking place inside the character’s head as the events around them unfold. There is no obvious narrator-character in this style; the reader is experiencing everything from the viewpoint of the character whose head we’re in for that particular scene. Again, as I mentioned before, in this POV, it is much easier to build tension, to heighten the conflict, when the reader only knows as much as the viewpoint-characters do. Past/Active tense is preferred, but many authors are starting to use Present tense in this POV.

Tomorrow, my crit partner Erica Vetsch will be sharing with us her experience with learning POV and incorporating it into her wonderful historical novel, Drums of the North Star, a finalist in the 2007 ACFW Genesis Contest!

How well do you write in the male and female viewpoints?

“Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author.”

The Gender Genie will test a 500+ word sample of your prose (longer is better) and tell you whether it has been written by a male or female.

So I entered the first three pages of William’s opening scene in Ransome’s Honor:

Words: 632
Female Score: 563
Male Score: 647
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Yay! The voice of William’s viewpoint is masculine!

Let’s try the first three pages of Julia’s opening scene:

Words: 636
Female Score: 963
Male Score: 714
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!

Apparently in Julia’s viewpoint, I’ve used both masculine and feminine words with higer points values, as the total scores are higher, but I’m pretty proud of the fact that a computer has confirmed that I’m on track with really getting inside my characters’ heads in this story. It’s also good to see that my word choice apparently changes when I switch viewpoints, resulting in the difference in total scores.

How does your writing come out? Are your hero’s scenes too feminine? Read over the list of “Masculine Keywords” the Gender Genie gives along with your score. Can you incorporate more of those words and fewer of the “Feminine Keywords”? If you’ve written different genres, try comparing scenes from each. What do you learn about your writing?

I’ve got a bunch of stuff at home to try out on this thing this weekend!

On yesterday’s post, Jennifer raised a very interesting debate: Point of View versus Viewpoint. Is there a difference in the two terms? To what are we referring with each?

Naturally, I went straight for the dictionary. According to the American Heritage Dictionary:

Viewpoint: A position from which something is observed or considered; a point of view.

Point of View: A manner of viewing things; an attitude. A position from which something is observed or considered, a standpoint. The attitude or outlook of a narrator or character in a piece of literature, a movie, or another form of art.

While Jennifer’s designations of viewpoint as being in a specific character’s head and point of view as being the narrative style chosen for the book are wonderfuly descriptive and tend to make the topic a bit clearer, according to the dictionary—as well as the publishing industry at large—the terms can be used interchangeably.

And the truth of the matter is that most books on writing, writing-related magazines, instructors, professors, seminars, workshops, and blogs about writing are going to use POV almost exclusively when talking about either the narrative style (first-person POV) or the idea of being inside the head of only one character (William’s POV/Julia’s POV). Viewpoint is not a word I’ve really heard bandied about much. In compiling the book list, I noticed it in a few titles—and it looks like they’re using it with the same meaning as we usually see point of view used.

For the sake of this discussion, let’s use viewpoint when talking about being inside a character’s head and point of view to describe the narrative style. Will that help clarify things for everyone?

Book List:
I will say right off the top that I have not read all of these books, but in researching them (mostly using the “search inside” feature on Amazon), here are some books that will help give a deeper understanding of POV/Viewpoint:

• Stein on Writing by Sol Stein (chapter: “Choosing a Point of View”). (Are you surprised? I mean, really, come on. He should be paying me half of his royalties on this title by now!)
• How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them by Sol Stein, which includes a chapter, “Getting Intimate with the Reader: Advanced Point of View.”
• Mastering Point of View by Sherri Szeman
• Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card (Elements of Fiction series)
• How Fiction Works: The Last Word on Writing Fiction, from Basics to the Fine Points by Oakley Hall (chapter: “Authority/Point of View,” which includes good examples of author-intrusion-style POV)
• Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress (Elements of Fiction series)

In the last post, I know I said “next time” we’d get into the nitty-gritty of what each of the different POV styles are, and I promise, the next post about POV will start getting down and dirty with persons, omniscience, and tense. So just hang in there!

“If all but one of the instruments on a surgeon’s tray had been sterilized, that exception would be a danger to the patient. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.”
~Sol Stein
(Stein on Writing, 129)

What is point of view, anyway?
Point of view is the vehicle through which a reader experiences the story. When you tell someone about the idiot who cut you off in traffic, you are telling the story through a First Person Limited point of view—you’re using “I” and “me” to refer to the character (yourself), and though you may conjecture at the thoughts of anyone else involved, you cannot actually know what was going on inside his or her head. (And this paragraph is an example of second-person POV.)

“So what I told you was true . . . from a certain point of view. . . . 
You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
~Obi Wan Kenobi
Return of the Jedi

Point of view, as Master Kenobi so cryptically and frustratingly pointed out, is the perspective we bring to what we experience. If I go through the exact same experience with someone else, and then each of us is questioned separately about it, whoever is hearing the stories is going to hear different details. I am a sight-oriented person, so I may give a lot of information about the visual details. If the person with me is a sound-oriented person, they’re going to give more description of the sounds . . . each of us tells the story from our own point of view. This is what makes us unique individuals. This is what we want to give to our readers—a unique, individual perspective on the story that’s going on.

“Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.”
~Horace

Have you ever noticed when you’re writing “as” one character, your words come out differently than when you’re writing “as” another character? Part of this is the personalizing process you went through in your character development. But you’ll find as you get deeper into your characters’ heads, as you let them start talking, the story really does start to be told from the character’s point of view and not from yours.

“He’s a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land, 
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody. 
Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to . . .”
~John Lennon

Establish POV Immediately
Point of view needs to be established in the very first chapter of your book. If you are going to write in first person, obviously, you start out with a first sentence/paragraph told using “I” and “me” pronouns. Yes, some first person narrative can be written without using those pronouns, but you don’t want to use a more omniscient tone (i.e., telling about someone else right off the bat without personalizing it to the character who’s seeing/thinking it) and then suddenly throw the reader into first person. If you are going to write in third person/omniscient (aka, “head-hopping”), make sure you establish a pattern in the very first few paragraphs—or as soon as you have more than one character. Using an unseen narrator helps in establishing this POV. If you are going to write in third person/limited, give the character at least five or six pages (about 2,000 words) before switching to another POV . . . then make the POV change very clear—with a double-carriage-return blank space or with some kind of physical divider such as *  *  * or ### centered in the blank space between the scenes.

Whatever you chose, DO NOT SWITCH BETWEEN STYLES, as it will come across as inexperience and a lack of knowledge of writing craft. Although some new writers have done it and been published, most experts, editors, agents, etc., strongly recommend against mixing first- and third-person or having more than one first-person narrator in a story, unless it is absolutely vital and the story can be told no other way. Of course, if you’re Steven King, Lori Wick, J.K. Rowling, or Danielle Steel, you can pretty much do whatever you want to (as people are buying the books for the name on the cover, not the craft of the story between the pages).

“I think you have to have a real point of view that’s your own.
You have to tell it your way.”
~Mary Ellen Mark

Give Third Person/Limited a Try
Give your characters a chance to tell it their way. I used to write third person/omniscient. I loved being able to hop from head to head to head within a scene, to see how each and every character reacted to a situation, to know what they were thinking at any given time—sometimes even within a sentence. Non-writing folks aren’t usually bothered by head-hopping as much as writers are. They’re used to it. We all grew up reading head-hopping novels. But the industry standard has swung, for third-person, anyway, to LIMITED POV. That means seeing/experiencing the action through only one character’s eyes/thoughts. That means camping out for a full scene in the head of just one character. That means getting to know your characters MUCH better than you may with omniscient/head-hopping POV.

After my first writers’ conference in 2001 where I really learned what POV was and that limited is what publishers were looking for, I started forcing myself to write in limited POV. And I discovered I love it. I now prefer writing in limited POV. Not knowing what every character is thinking raises the conflict and tension of every scene. It’s easier to keep secrets from the reader until the right time to reveal them. It’s easier to generate misunderstandings and conflict in relationships between characters that are believable, because the reader isn’t given the chance to see things from both perspectives—they’re only seeing the truth . . . “from a certain point of view.” Even if you don’t stick with it as your POV of choice, you will learn a lot about how to write descriptively—because you will only be able to describe other characters’ thoughts by their facial expression, tone of voice, body language, etc., that the POV character can experience. It’s a great craft-strengthening exercise.

What POV do you typically write in? Have you ever tried writing more than one style of POV (i.e., first- and third-person) within the same story? How did that work out for you? What are some examples of stuff you’ve read where you really liked or disliked the POV the author chose? How would you have done it differently?

Next time, we’ll start getting into some of the nitty-gritty of the different POV styles . . . pros/cons, strengths/weaknesses.

For the last week, we’ve been focusing on characters. Hopefully, you’ve picked up a few tips and have spent some time getting to know your character(s) better and learning more about the story they’re trying to tell you.

Before deciding on first- or third-person (or even second), limited or omniscient, present or past tense, the most important thing to figure out is WHOSE STORY IS THIS?

In a typical romance, there are two POV characters: the hero and the heroine. In chick lit, there is only one: the chick telling her own story. In a mystery, you may have only one: the detective/sleuth; or you may have several: the detective, a red-herring character (make the reader think he’s the villain), the actual villain, a victim (alive or dead, if you’re including supernatural elements). In general, historical, sci-fi, and fantasy fiction, there are most likely going to be multiple POV characters.

So, how do we decide who gets to have a say? Whose head we’re going to invade?

If the genre doesn’t dictate the POV (i.e., standard romance or chick lit), the first thing you must do is determine who the stakeholders in the story are. In other words, who has the most to lose and the most to gain in your story? Who has a stake in the conflict/plot? Which character(s) has the most important information to reveal to the reader? Do you want the reader to know it by being inside that character’s thoughts, or do you want the reader to find out when “all is revealed” to another character whose stake in the plot is greater?

Next, who has the most to learn/the most potential for growth? If the theme of your story is forgiveness, a POV character who has already learned how to forgive isn’t going to make for interesting reading. POV characters should be those who not only have a stake in the plot, but who also have a character arc—in other words, they’re different at the end of the story than when we first meet them at the beginning. Not all characters who change/grow are going to end up being POV characters. Some of them will remain secondary. But they have the best potential.

Finally, which characters are most compelling? Who will the reader want to know and become intimate with? Who do you as the author want to get to know and become intimate with? The characters that resonate with our readers are going to be the characters that we, as the author, fall in love with. They are going to be the ones with the deepest flaws (Scarlett O’Hara), the ones who can never seem to get ahead (Charlie Brown), or the ones who must time and again face their greatest foes/fears (Harry Potter).

When I first started writing Ransome’s Honor, I had two POV characters: William and Julia. Then Julia’s mother wanted to have her say. About seven or eight chapters in, Sir Drake burst onto the scene and barged in, telling things how he wanted them to be. These four POVs seemed to work pretty well . . . until I got to chapter sixteen and William’s younger sister arrived in Portsmouth. I suddenly realized she’s a major stakeholder in not just the first book but in the entire trilogy—I allowed her to have a POV, and immediately, the plots for the second and third books materialized in sharp detail, not just the vague idea I’d had up until then. I am now working on the second draft. Julia’s mother has switched teams and is now Sir Drake’s mother (Julia’s aunt) and because of this can become the secondary character she needs to be. Sir Drake’s POV is introduced at the end of the first chapter (the scene not only introduces him, but raises the stakes for Julia’s conflict), and Charlotte’s importance has been increased by her first POV scene (new) appearing at the end of the second chapter (introduces the idea she’s keeping a major secret from her mother and William—raising the stakes for both her and for William—and Julia in Book 2).

Have you chosen your POV characters or have they chosen you? How do you determine which characters you’re going to allow to have “stage time”? Have you ever cut a POV character completely in a revision—or added one? Have you ever written a POV character you didn’t really like?